Family Economic Circumstances Research Articles

Money Matters: Time for Prevention and Early Intervention to Address Family Economic Circumstances

Child poverty is associated with poorer physical and mental health, negative educational outcomes and adverse long-term social and psychological consequences, all of which impact on service demand and expenditure. Until now, however, prevention and early intervention practice has tended to focus on enhancing inter-parental relationships and parenting skills (e.g., via relationship skills education, home visiting, parenting programs, family therapy) or child language, social-emotional and life skills (e.g., early childhood education, school-based programs, youth mentoring). Programs often target low-income neighborhoods or families but rarely address poverty directly. While there is substantial evidence for the effectiveness of such interventions in improving child outcomes, null results are not uncommon and even positive effects are often small, short-term, and difficult to replicate. One avenue to enhance intervention effectiveness is to improve families’ economic circumstances. There are several arguments for this refocusing. It is arguably unethical to focus on individual risk without acknowledging or seeking to address (where relevant) families’ social and economic contexts, while the stigma and material constraints associated with poverty can make it harder for families to engage with psychosocial support. There is also evidence that increasing household income improves child outcomes. Although national policies to alleviate poverty are important, it is increasingly recognized that practice-based initiatives have a role to play (e.g., income maximization, devolved budgets, money management support). However, knowledge about their implementation and effectiveness is relatively thin. For instance, there is some evidence that co-located welfare rights advice in healthcare settings can improve recipients’ financial circumstances and health, but it is mixed and of limited quality. Moreover, there is little rigorous research on whether and how such services affect mediators (parent-child interactions, parenting capacity) and/or child physical and psychosocial outcomes directly. We call for prevention and early intervention programs to attend more to families’ economic circumstances, and for experimental studies to test their implementation, reach and effectiveness.

Mean Differences in Student Dimension, Technology Characteristic, Instructor Characteristic Based on Demography Factors

The worldwide COVID 19 epidemic that occurred in 2019 had a huge impact on everyone's lives. Nearly all sectors and industries have experienced a substantial impact as a result of the pandemic. The Movement Control Order was put into effect by the government in March 2020, which caused a disruption in people's routines. Higher education is one of the industries that have undergone significant overall change. The teaching and learning process continues throughout MCO, shifting from in-person instruction to online distant learning (ODL). Regardless of demographic differences, family economic circumstances, or unsuitable and uncomfortable learning conditions at home, all students are compelled to participate in ODL learning sessions. Examining the variations in student dimensions, technology characteristics, and instructor characteristics based on demographic factors is the main objective of this work. Gender, the student's current location (campus or hometown), the area (urban or rural), and the student's response to the question "Do you have a proper study area?" are all examples of demographic factors. The study's findings show that the area for instructor characteristic satisfaction score and respondents' gender only differ by a statistically significant result. Gender, respondent area, and study area conditions all varied significantly in terms of the student dimension satisfaction score. The technology characteristic satisfaction score did not show any notable variations for any of the categories.

Improving Learning Achievement in Pancasila and Citizenship Education Through Motivation by Parents in Class VIII Students of SMPN 16 Solok Selatan

This study aims to describe the increase in civics learning achievement through the provision of motivation by parents and to find out the obstacles experienced in an effort to improve learning achievement in Civics subjects. Research methods used are Qualitative with a Descriptive approach that produces descriptive data in the form of written or spoken words from people and behaviors observed by the research location of SMPN 16 Solok Selatan. With observation techniques, interviews by looking for complete and in-depth information and Documentation Studies. Data analysis techniques through observation, interviews and documentation studies. The results of this study show the role of parents to improve learning achievement in providing guidance, providing learning facilities, attention and supervision. Barriers to improving student learning achievement Family Economic Circumstances. Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that the provision of guidance and providing learning facilities as well as gifts and praise by parents to improve student learning achievement in the subject of Civic Education (Civics) class VIII SMPN 16 Solok Selatan has been carried out, therefore as parents must have a clear picture or strategy about educating and nurturing children, directing and educating the child to learn. Providing facilities in learning is one of the supports for children in motivating them to learn. And the existence of gifts and praise is part of the motivation that can affect the level of learning of children and also the obstacles experienced by parents vary from economic difficulties and lack of understanding of parents in educating children because some parents are less educated. If the child lives in a poor family, the child's basic needs are not met and as a result, the child's health is disturbed, so the child's learning is also disrupted.

Children of the Syndemic

The term syndemic was developed by medical anthropologists to “label the synergistic interaction of two or more coexistent diseases and resultant excess burden of disease.” COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated societal inequalities among children through differential indirect effects on family financial security, social adversity, mental health, and educational access, among other things. Using a child rights-based approach, the review examines how the syndemic has impacted aspects of the life of children, such as healthcare access, educational access, and family economic circumstances. The examples of the impact of the pandemic and existing inequities, the syndemic, given throughout the review are only a snapshot of the broad effects of the pandemic on the lives of children worldwide. Children have been spared by the worst direct clinical effects of COVID-19, but the indirect effects have been severe. Pediatricians and their organizations can contribute by working with non-governmental organizations and advocating for policy decisions at local, national, and international levels, which protect children from the short- and long-term consequences of the syndemic.

(Not) minding the gap: A qualitative interview study of how social class bias can influence youth mentoring relationships.

This study sought to examine how social class bias may be enacted by mentors and mentoring program staff within community-based youth mentoring relationships and how these biases may influence the mentoring relationship. A narrative thematic analysis was conducted with interviews from mentors, mentees' parents/caregivers, and mentoring program staff representing 36 matches participating in a larger, prospective, mixed-methods study examining factors associated with early match closures. Findings indicate that although some mentors were able to partner with the youth and family to effectively navigate challenges related to the family's economic circumstances, other mentors and some mentoring program staff held deficit views of the youth and their family that appeared to be at least partially rooted in negative social class-based assumptions about attitudes and behaviors. Specifically, we observed tendencies on the part of some mentors and program staff toward (a) deficit-based views of families and youth, (b) individual-level attributions for the family's economic circumstances and blaming of caregivers, and (c) perceiving mentors as being underappreciated by the youth's caregiver. These deficit perspectives contributed to the minimization of parent/caregiver voice in the mentoring process and negative interpretations of parent/caregiver and, in some cases, youth attitudes and behaviors.

Economic Circumstances in Childhood and Subsequent Substance Use in Adolescence - A Latent Class Analysis: The youth@hordaland Study.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the association between longitudinal registry-based data on family income during childhood and self-reported substance use in adolescence, including potential alcohol- or drug problems. Data from the Norwegian population-based youth@hordaland-survey was employed, and the analyzed included n = 8,983 adolescents aged 16–19 years. This information was linked to registry-based information about childhood family income for seven consecutive years prior to adolescents’ participation in the youth@hordaland-survey. Latent class analyses (LCA) were used to examine associations between patterns of family economic circumstances in childhood and subsequent substance use in adolescence. Based on the LCA, we identified four distinct patterns of family economic circumstances: a ‘never poor’ (89.3%) group, followed by two groups characterized by moving in (3.0%) or out (4.6%) of poverty, and a final ‘chronically poor’ (3.1%) group. Several findings were of interest: the chronically poor reported less daily snus use, fewer had tried alcohol, were less likely to report frequent intoxication, and less prone to have potential alcohol- or drug-related problems compared to all other groups. They were also less likely to have tried any illicit drug compared to those moving in or out of poverty. Finally, the chronically poor reported more daily smoking than the never poor group, but less daily smoking than the moving out of poverty group. The never poor group was less likely to have tried any illicit drugs compared to the groups moving into or out of poverty, and less likely to smoke daily compared to the moving out of poverty group. In other words, the present study somewhat surprisingly suggested lower substance use among the chronically poor adolescents compared to other adolescents on several of the measures of substance use.

Against All Odds or by Dint of Privilege? Happiness and Life Satisfaction Returns to College in America

Health gains linked to a college degree appear to be contingent on childhood socioeconomic background, with disadvantaged individuals typically showing the greatest gains in physical health. However, contingent gains in subjective well-being remain unexplored. This study examines happiness and life satisfaction gains linked to college degree attainment, using representative U.S. data spanning recent decades (from the General Social Survey 1972–2014). For women, happiness and life satisfaction gains linked to college are highest for those who were least likely to attend and graduate based on their family economic circumstances. In contrast, men show the highest life satisfaction gains from college when coming from privileged family backgrounds. These findings fall in line with gender and institutional perspectives on education and life chances. For both sexes, college disparities in life satisfaction show substantial variation across cohorts and the life course.

Chinese and Korean mothers in England: motherhood, gender and employment

This article explores the lived experiences of first-generation Chinese and South Korean mothers living in England. The data are analysed using six intersecting categories: motherhood and gender ideology; educational level; reasons for migration; the length of stay in England; family economic circumstances; and the locality of settlement. The findings suggest that, while there appear to be stark differences in Chinese and South Korean mothers’ understanding of motherhood and employment, their accounts concurrently indicate commonalities in terms of persistent gender inequality at home, founded on patriarchal values. Out of the six interrelated categories, their motherhood and gender ideology obtained in their country of origin seems to have had a dominant influence in shaping these women’s experiences, along with their settlement into their respective ethnic communities.

Capital interplays and the self-rated health of young men: results from a cross-sectional study in Switzerland.

IntroductionWe apply capital interplay theory to health inequalities in Switzerland by investigating the interconnected effects of parental cultural, economic and social capitals and personal educational stream on the self-rated health of young Swiss men who live with their parents.MethodsWe apply logistic regression modelling to self-rated health in original cross-sectional survey data collected during mandatory conscription of Swiss male citizens in 2010 and 2011 (n = 23,975).ResultsIn comparison with sons whose parents completed mandatory schooling only, sons with parents who completed technical college or university were significantly more likely to report very good or excellent self-rated health. Parental economic capital was an important mediating factor in this regard. Number of books in the home (parental cultural capital), family economic circumstances (parental economic capital) and parental ties to influential people (parental social capital) were also independently associated with the self-rated health of the sons. Although sons in the highest educational stream tended to report better health than those in the lowest, we found little evidence for a health-producing intergenerational transmission of capitals via the education stream of the sons. Finally, the positive association between personal education and self-rated health was stronger among sons with relatively poorly educated parents and stronger among sons with parents who were relatively low in social capital.ConclusionsOur study provides empirical support for the role of capital interplays, social processes in which capitals interpenetrate or co-constitute one another, in the intergenerational production of the health of young men in Switzerland.

Parental Economic Hardship and Children's Achievement Orientations.

While children's orientations to achievement are strong predictors of attainments, little is known about how parental economic hardship during recessionary times influences children's orientations to their futures. The Youth Development Study has followed a community sample of young people in St Paul, Minnesota from mid-adolescence through their mid-thirties with near-annual surveys, and has recently begun surveying the children of this cohort. Using linked parent and child data, the present study examines the relationship between parental economic hardship and children's achievement orientations in the aftermath of the recent "Great Recession." Initial OLS analyses draw on 345 parent-child pairs, with data collected from parents during their adolescence, during the decade prior to the recession, and in 2011, and from their children (age 11 and older) in 2011. Then, first difference models are estimated, based on a smaller sample (N=186) of parents and children who completed surveys in both 2009 and 2011. Our findings indicate that when families are more vulnerable, as a result of low parental education and prior parental unemployment experience, children's achievement orientations are more strongly threatened by the family's economic circumstances. For example, as parental financial problems increased, economic expectations declined only among children of the least well-educated parents. Low household incomes diminished educational aspirations only when parents experienced unemployment during the ten years prior to the recent recession. Parental achievement orientations, as adolescents, were also found to moderate the impacts of shifts in the family's economic circumstances. Finally, boys reacted more strongly to their parents' hardship than girls.

More than poverty: disruptive events among women having abortions in the USA

BackgroundIn the USA, abortion has become increasingly concentrated among poor women. For many, poverty represents difficulties meeting financial obligations, but the authors expect it is also associated with a range...

Childhood family income and life outcomes in adulthood: Findings from a 30-year longitudinal study in New Zealand

The aims of this study were to use data gathered over the course of a 30-year longitudinal study to examine the linkages between economic circumstances in childhood and subsequent developmental outcomes spanning educational achievement; economic circumstances; crime; mental health; and teenage pregnancy. All of these outcomes have been linked with childhood economic conditions and it is frequently argued that reducing income inequalities will mitigate psychosocial risks of children reared in families facing economic hardship. Alternatively it may be suggested that the associations between childhood family economic circumstances and later outcomes are mediated by individual, family and social factors that are correlated with low family income and contribute to later outcomes. To examine these issues, data were drawn from a birth cohort of New Zealand children born in 1977 and followed to age 30.Declining childhood family income was associated with a range of negative outcomes in adulthood, including: lower educational achievement; poorer economic circumstances; higher rates of criminal offending; higher rates of mental health problems; and higher rates of teenage pregnancy. After covariate adjustment, childhood family income remained significantly associated with educational achievement and economic circumstances, but was no longer significantly associated with the mental health, offending and teenage pregnancy outcomes. These findings suggest that, after due allowance has been made for social, family and individual contextual factors, low family income during childhood is associated with a range of educational and economic disadvantages in adulthood but is not directly related to increased risks of crime, mental health problems or teen pregnancy.

三首诗

三首诗 庞 培 (bio) Translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain (bio) 云影 树在帮你呼吸不被打扰地做完你的梦。河流、白云也是清早，当你碰见一个好天气你能从静静伫立的树身上感觉到天色何其湛蓝，云影何等欢畅！我们大家，我们全体都被托在一枚树叶那么温凉秋天的掌心 音乐 我抱着吉他。没有弹想起一些人和事一些数字旧的会面流逝的片断……所有这些，比我可能弹奏的音乐，更像是音乐这是灵魂庞大的出席：你十九岁，脸上有着初涉人世的羞赧-- [End Page 62] 雨中作 车厢在写诗有一个人和一只手的扶手在写诗刹车，绿灯刮雨器写诗叽叽嘎嘎的空座椅在写诗雨落进黑夜落入空无一人的站台……这分行，空格的雨 [End Page 64] Three Poems Pang Pei Cloud Shadow Trees are helping you to breatheUnstirred, you finish your dream. Running river, clouds are alsomorning, when you meet fine weatheryou can feel from trees standing in silencethe joys of cloud shadows and such a blue sky!All of us, the whole group,are entrusted in a leaf, such coolpalm of autumn Music I hug a guitar. Without playing itthinking of some people and thingssome numbersold encountersfading fragments . . .All of these are more musicalthan the music I can playThis is the massive attendance of soul:you are nineteen, a shy facethat has just tasted the world- [End Page 63] Composed in the Rain Writing a poem in a coachA man and a hand help a hand to write a poemIt screeches to a halt, the light is greenWindshield wipers write a poemA quaking empty seat is writing a poemRain falls into black nightinto an empty platform. . . this verse, a blank spacing of rain [End Page 65] 庞 培 Pang Pei 庞培 (1962-) was born in Suying, Jiangsu Province. After he completed junior high school, his family's economic circumstances compelled him to leave school. He first worked in shipyards and later in textile factories. In 1985, he published his first novel, and in 1988, his poems began to appear in newspapers and magazines. Affectionately known among his peers as the "Poet of the Rain," he is a recipient of the 1995 Liu Li'an Poetry Prize and the 1997 Rougang Poetry Award. He is the author of several collections of poetry and prose, including Whisper (1998), Book of Melancholy (2000), Three-Quarter Rain (2009), and Various Verses (2011). Fiona Sze-Lorrain Fiona Sze-Lorrain (1980-) was born in Singapore and educated at Columbia University, New York University, and Paris IV-Sorbonne, where she received a doctorate in French. She writes and translates in English, French, and Chinese. Her first collection of poetry, Water the Moon, was published in 2010. She is an editor at Cerise Press and Vif Éditions. Also a zheng concertist, she lives in Paris, France. Copyright © 2012 University of Hawai'i Press

Social Psychological Factors Affecting the Employment of Graduate Students in Taiwan

In this study the researchers use principal factor analysis to identify the factors affecting the competitiveness of college graduate students in the job market, based on a sample of senior students enrolled in an undergraduate school. The analysis revealed 5 factors that influence the students' employment prospects: learning ability, foreign language ability, cooperation, information technology, and interpersonal relations. We also analyze the effect of differences in gender and family economic circumstances in relation to the 5 factors, and conclude that these influence both students' employment prospects and their career planning.

International and internal migration measured from the School Census in England

The School Census is the only regularly updated dataset covering almost all of the population of a specific age, which records changes of address along with ethnicity and some family economic circumstances. It can be used to measure internal and international family migration as shown in this report. The School Census is suited to identify and quantify new local migration streams between censuses, successfully identifying the local distribution of Eastern European immigration in the decade since 2000. The measures do not provide a complete measure of migration, either internally or internationally. The exclusion of those outside the state school system means that internal migration is under-estimated, and international migration is approximately measured. The advantages of the School Census are its frequent updates, its fine geographical information, and its indicators of ethnicity and low family income, which powerfully complement other sources.

Family Affairs: Incest in Jorge Isaacs's María

Since its publication in 1867, has enjoyed near-constant popularity throughout Latin America; indeed, it has never been out of print. Donald McGrady claims that Maria [is] the widest-read novel in Hispanic America, having appeared in close to 140 editions in its first hundred years (139). Its popularity has been accompanied by critical attention focusing on topics ranging from the narrative structure, the character of Maria, and the role of Romanticism to patriarchy and nationalism in the novel's social structure. Of these, several critics have commented on the triangle formed by the narrator, Efrain, his father, and herself. Yet one aspect of the novel has not been addressed in detail. That is the relationship between and the father, a relationship that may provoke deeply disturbing implications for the careful reader. In this essay I will argue that a father-daughter relationship with incestuous overtones, whether realized or potential, results in the failure of and Efrain's possible relationship and in the eventual destruction of the family unit. In this reading, it is the father's incestuous approaches toward Maria, not, as some critics have argued, Maria's love for Efrain, that cause her hysterical illness and eventually kill her.Conditions are ripe in the household for the development of an incestuous relationship between the father and Maria. Although is not the father's biological daughter, she does fulfill the role of a daughter within the household; while is Efrain's second cousin by blood, she has been raised since the age of three as his sister and as the daughter of Efrain's mother and father. As Efrain comments, Pocos eran entonces los que conociendo nuestra familia, pudiesen sospechar que no era hija de mis padres (13). Not only does occupy the position of a daughter, but she does so in an exceptionally conventional-even overly so-patriarchal family. The women who might have protected her are absent, either literally or figuratively. Her biological mother, of course, is dead, and her adoptive mother accedes to her husband's wishes in almost all regards, either unable or unwilling to challenge him openly. When the adoptive mother does go against the father's desires, she does so secretly. Tellingly, when she conspires with her son, Efrain, against her husband, Efrain's father, it is to thwart the father's plans to prevent Efrain from declaring his love to and from eventually marrying her, which would result in removing from the father's possessive reach, as we shall see.Efrain's father exerts a degree of control over his family unusual even by nineteenth-century standards. As many critics have commented, depicts a rigidly patriarchal family structure. The father dominates the family and exercises a remarkable control over his wife and children; his decisions are unquestioned, even when they cause Efrain and great unhappiness. Both Efrain and are unfailingly obedient. At the same time, the father is a respected member ofthe community, commanding the respect and loyalty of his tenants and of the other landowners in the valley.The father's dominance has repercussions not just for the personal relationships in the family, but for the family's economic circumstances as well. As Sylvia Molloy avers, underlying the novel's seemingly innocent plot of love lost is the story of a patriarchal control whose ultimate result is the loss not just of love but of paradise, the family home. Molloy notes, Se observa en la conducta paterna presente ... Ia intolerancia absoluta de la perdida, la necesidad de controlarlo todo. Una ferrea economia paterna-autoritaria, despotica-rige los destinos familiares y mas precisamente el destino del hijo (48). Similarly, Rodolfo Borello sees the father as the embodied representative of social control: El padre no es solamente la autoridad; encarna, ademas, los intereses de la familia, la voluntad de Dios, el Destino. …

Randomized Trial of the Early Start Program of Home Visitation: Parent and Family Outcomes

To examine the extent to which the Early Start program of home visitation had beneficial consequences in the areas of maternal health, family functioning, family economic circumstances, and exposure to stress and adversity. The study used a randomized, controlled trial design in which 220 families receiving the Early Start program were contrasted with a control series of 223 families not receiving the program. Families were enrolled in the program after population screening conducted by community health nurses. Families were enrolled in the program for up to 36 months. Outcomes were assessed at 6, 12, 24, and 36 months after trial entry. There was a consistent lack of association between maternal and family outcomes and group membership. There were no significant differences between the Early Start and control series in any comparisons. This evaluation suggested that the Early Start program failed to lead to parent- and family-related benefits. This absence of benefit for parent/family outcomes is contrasted with the benefits found previously for child-related outcomes, including child health, preschool education, child abuse and neglect, parenting, and behavioral adjustment. This comparison suggests that home visitation programs may provide benefits for child-related outcomes in the absence of parent- or family-related outcomes.

Children's health coverage: a quarter-century of change.

Data from a series of medical spending surveys over the past twenty-five years show that uninsurance rates for children have fallen to levels not seen since the late 1970s (about 8 percent). Rates of uninsurance have fallen in particular for poor children. Deteriorating family economic circumstances, along with a weakened safety net, contributed to the decrease of private insurance coverage and rising uninsurance rates between 1977 and 1987. Although family circumstances have stabilized since the late 1980s, high annual increases in health insurance costs have continued to erode private coverage. Public coverage expansions have reversed the surge in uninsurance rates during 1977-1987.

Southern Women in Revolution, 1776-1800: Personal and Political Narratives

Southern Women in Revolution, 1776-1800: Personal and Political Narratives. By Cynthia A. Kierner. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998. Pp. xvi, 253. Illustrations. $34.95.) She Left Nothing in Particular. The Autobiographical Legacy of Nineteenth-Century Women's Diaries. By Amy L. Wink. (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2001. Pp. xxxvi, 162. $25.00.) At first glance, Cynthia A. Kierner's presentation and interpretation of eighteenth-century petitions submitted by women to the legislatures of the southern states during and shortly after the War for Independence and Amy Wink's intensive analysis of mid-nineteenth-century women's diaries appear to have little in common. Taken together, however, they expand our of women's lives, of women's writings (broadly defined), and of the relationship between the two during the chronological period covered by this journal. Although both scholars acknowledge the political and social constraints under which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women lived and labored, their scholarship-and the documents themselves-- forcefully remind us that ordinary women were neither quiescent nor invisible as they carved out lives for themselves in their own place and time. In ways Kierner's task is the more difficult of the two; petitioning, especially by women in the eighteenth century, has been studied much less systematically than nineteenth-century diary writing. Kierner's interest in the petitions grew out of a more general concern with the changing relationship of eighteenth-century women to the public sphere, and although her research for the broader study informs this volume, it also has been published separately in Beyond the Household: Women's Place in the Early South, 1700-1800 (1998). Southern Women in Revolution offers a selection of 98 women's petitions to the legislatures of North and South Carolina (chosen from a total of 240) edited, annotated, and introduced by a series of original interpretive essays. Kierner organizes the petitions into five groups-Families at War; The Cost of Liberty; The Loyalist Legacy; Women, Allegiance and Citizenship; and The Limits of Revolution-and her introductory essays are designed to illuminate the broader historical context that produced the petitions within a particular group or to interpret the common theme that unites them. The essays draw on an array of primary sources from Virginia and Georgia as well as the Carolinas, but although Kierner analyzed petitions from the former two states, none are included among the edited documents in the volume. Kierner's analysis of the petitions builds on earlier scholarship by Linda K. Kerber, Mary Beth Norton, Constance B. Schulz, and Patricia Higgins on women and petitioning and by Alison Olson and Raymond Bailey on eighteenth-century American legislative petitioning specifically. She finds, not surprisingly, that most petitioners were widows, single women, or the wives of Loyalists. A vast majority were literate, at least to the extent that they could sign their own names, and, surprisingly, roughly half penned the entire text of the documents they submitted for the legislators' consideration (53). Although levels of worldly experience and financial knowledge varied among the women, Kierner concludes that most who remained at home in wartime knew what property their families owned, what compensation soldiers received, and what the government paid for produce (52). She also maintains that some of the most effusively deferential supplicants used the conventional language of feminine innocence and dependence to mask genuine understanding of their family's economic circumstances and interests (52). Kierner's principal concern in analyzing the language of the petitions is to determine the extent to which women considered themselves citizens of the republic. She concludes that even the most verbally assertive petitioners were reluctant to claim the rights and obligations of citizenship. …

Delayed Parental Divorce: How Much Do Children Benefit?

This study compares children who experienced divorce in childhood with those who were young adults when their parents divorced to differentiate between long‐term effects of divorce resulting from preexisting factors, including the child's behavioral problems and psychological status as well as the family's economic circumstances, and those resulting from divorce itself. We used National Child Development Study data on 11,409 British children born in 1958 and followed up until age 33. Children's long‐term welfare appears to be linked both to conditions preceding and following the divorce event. The results point to some limitations of existing studies on divorce and suggest caution in drawing conclusions about average effects of divorce. The impact of divorce appears to be a complex blend of selection and socialization.